The Devilish Complexities of Divine Simplicity

Philo 6 (1):10-22 (2003)
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Abstract

In On the Nature and Existence of God, Richard Gale follows majority opinion in giving very short shrift to the doctrine of divine simplicity: in his view, there is no coherent expressible doctrine of divine simplicity. Rising to the implicit challenge, I argue that---contrary to what is widely believed---there is a coherently expressible doctrine of divine simplicity, though it is rather different from the views that are typically expressed by defenders of this doctrine. At the very least, I think that I manage to show that there are ways of understanding the doctrine of divine simplicity that have not yet been adequately examined.

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Graham Oppy
Monash University

Citations of this work

Divine Simplicity.William F. Vallicella - 2019 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Simplicity and aseity.Jeffrey E. Brower - 2008 - In Thomas P. Flint & Michael Rea (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology. Oxford University Press. pp. 105-28.
Making Sense of Divine Simplicity.Jeffrey E. Brower - 2008 - Faith and Philosophy 25 (1):3-30.
Simplicity or Priority?Gregory Fowler - 2015 - In Jonathan L. Kvanvig (ed.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion, vol. 6. Oxford University Press. pp. 114-138.
Nestes Modes, ’Qua’ and the Incarnation.Alexander R. Pruss - 2014 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 6 (2):65--80.

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Truth­-Makers.Kevin Mulligan, Peter Simons & Barry Smith - 2009 - Swiss Philosophical Preprints.
Does God Have a Nature?Alvin Plantinga - 1980 - Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.
The metaphysics of properties.Alex Oliver - 1996 - Mind 105 (417):1-80.
Truthmakers, entailment and necessity.Greg Restall - 1996 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 74 (2):331 – 340.

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